Runebreaker

by Alex R. Kahler

  He set down the cat.

  “Why’d you have to take it there?”

  She shrugged. “Would you expect anything less?”

  She had a point.

  “What will you do?” Kianna asked.

  She lounged on the couch under a thick duvet, hearth fire dancing across her features. Aidan curled up on a recliner by the flames. They’d managed to clear out most of the dust and broken china, and a few spare blankets blocked out the morning sun. The Sphere of Fire still smoldered in his chest—he never let go of it, not fully, as it felt like letting go of life itself—but he let it rest there, let it turn to embers. It still drained him slightly, but it was worth it to feel warm.

  “What?” he asked dumbly. Their salvaged dinner of rehydrated beans and rice made him want to pass out. Even though a small part of him feared sleeping with so many flammable objects around. Kianna included.

  “On the other side of this. When Calum is dead. What will you do?”

  Rule.

  Aidan bit down the word, the images of him on Calum’s throne, of making Scotland bow. Of Tomás at his side. He hadn’t given much thought to the dream since they’d left Glasgow. Killing Calum was an overwhelming urge. But, sidled up next to that goal, was the image that still haunted him—Tomás, promising Aidan everything. A throne. A country. A partner.

  Tomás isn’t real.

  And yet, the desire for him was. Aidan didn’t know what was worse—wanting to screw a Howl, or wanting to screw a figment of his own imagination. He wasn’t one for introspection. Probably for the best—he didn’t want to know what it meant that his subconscious had fleshed this out.

  “We move on to the next Kin,” Aidan said. He looked at her. They’d never really spoken of “after” when they’d spent so long preparing for this. “There’s nothing else.”

  She just nodded, staring into the flames as if they told a future he couldn’t see.

  Anyone else would have given a speech on there being more to life than killing. Not Kianna. Another reason they got along. They knew the truth about the new world. There was no hope of settling down, of having a home or a family, no chance of love or working toward a brighter future. That was all bullshit.

  The only thing left was killing or fleeing.

  The two of them knew precisely which side of the line they stood on.

  People like Trevor, they thought there was an after to all of this. As though one day all the Howls would be dead and the necromancers gone and the world could return to normal. Aidan was smarter than that. He knew there would never be an after. There was only this: the rain and the bloodshed, the monsters and the madness. This was the world now.

  Dreaming of a world after Howls and magic was as stupid as dreaming of a world where dinosaurs returned.

  Things changed.

  Just like the dinosaurs, things ended.

  In this case, “civilization” had been on the chopping block. Frankly, Aidan thought they’d all earned it for bringing this about. This wasn’t some otherworldly plague—the Howls were created by humans. It was humanity’s nature to fuck things up. Another reason he didn’t really think there was or should be an after: humanity didn’t really deserve to carry on.

  He sure as hell didn’t.

  Though it would be nice to have a civilization around to remember him.

  “Get some sleep,” Kianna muttered. She rolled over on the sofa, back to him. “I’ll wake you in a few hours.” She had an inner alarm that was as good as any clock.

  Aidan grunted in response.

  “And, Aidan?”

  Another grunt.

  “Seriously, if you burn this place down, please start with the cats.”

  Despite everything, Aidan grinned.

  On the other side of sleep, he was going to make history.

  I’m coming for you, Calum, he thought, staring into the flames.

  As his vision blurred, he could have sworn he saw Tomás smiling back.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Aidan didn’t dream. He didn’t dream, and he didn’t burn the farmhouse down, and when Kianna woke him, his entire body snapped to attention.

  It was time to kill.

  There was a definite spring in his step as they gathered their things and made their way back on the road. Sure enough, he sensed the army ahead of them, their magic faint and growing fainter. They’d begun moving, as well.

  “How far are we?” he asked.

  “Few more hours,” Kianna said. “We’ll be there by dusk.”

  He glanced to the clouded sky. It was impossible to tell if the sun was even up. Didn’t matter, though.

  He practically jogged down the road, through ruined fields and glens, a heavy morning mist curled around him and Fire smoking in his bones.

  Today was the day he killed Calum.

  Today was the day he proved you didn’t underestimate Aidan Belmont.

  Today was the day he proved once and for all that this country was his.

  * * *

  A few hours in, and the faint sense of magic that led him forward changed. Flared. And as nightfall rolled in, the horizon before them burst red and hot with flame.

  Aidan and Kianna exchanged a glance. The battle had begun.

  “You should be proud,” Kianna said as they jogged toward the blaze.

  “Why?” he asked. He always was.

  “They’re following your orders. Immediate attack.”

  He smiled. If they followed his plan exactly, this might go easier than even he had thought.

  * * *

  Edinburgh roared with hellfire.

  Aidan’s breath caught in his throat the moment it came into view. It was nothing like the city he had toured with his mother years ago. Nothing quaint or archaic about it, even without the burn in the air. Years ago, only months after the Resurrection, Calum and his necromancers had claimed the city as their own. They didn’t just take it over, though. They recreated it.

  The old and new towns surrounding the castle had been demolished. Hundreds of years of history, lost to the rumble of Earth mages and the ferocity of Fire. In their place, a wall of slick stone had been raised five stories tall, blocking out whatever now rested within. Aidan had seen the destruction firsthand, had watched as rows upon rows of tenement buildings were burned to ash and buried beneath stone, as the waters of the Firth of Forth boiled and spilled over, drowning humans and houses, erasing swathes of land in moments. The Queen’s Palace? Toppled. The great hill called Arthur’s Seat that had guarded the city from the very beginning? Leveled.

  All that truly remained of the once-glorious capital was the castle, sitting high atop a magically raised hill. Stretching out for miles all around the wall, the soil was smooth and black and tarnished, glinting obsidian.

  And now, in the heat of the attack, that obsidian glimmered gold. Something about the carnage pulled at Aidan’s chest, made whispers slither through his heart. Seeing the castle tugged at him. It was a shadow on his soul, a black hole dragging him down.

  Somehow, deep down in the embers of Fire, the castle whispered of home.

  It’s from there that you should rule, the whispers promised, feminine and forbidden. This is your destiny. This is your kingdom. From here, you will burn the world.

  He tried to force them down, tried to focus on the battle in front of him. But every time he looked at the castle, he felt that hook in his chest, that tug forward. This was where he was meant to be. Fire knew it. He was beginning to know it, as well.

  They crouched at the top of a hill; Aidan had no idea if the hill had been there before the Resurrection, or if it was the work of some pissed-off Earth mage. All that remained of the town around him was rubble, the ground itself frozen in burnt waves.

  He watched the attack with an odd mix of awe and pride and anger. On the one hand, the bl
ack-garbed figures rushing on this side of the wall were his comrades. He’d laughed and trained and killed with all of them, knew most by name. They ran forward with weapons raised, their Spheres blazing like beacons in the night as fire billowed ahead of them, as the ground shook and the wall trembled, as the rains above twisted into icy shards and tornados churned from the skies, lightning illuminating it all in broken strobes. They were doing exactly what he’d trained them to do.

  And yet he was supposed to be down there. Not up here, impotent, standing beside Kianna and a cairn of burnt stone, watching the destruction unfold.

  Even if the attack had been without warning, Calum’s forces were far from unprepared. Shields of Air billowed up and over the castle, blocking it and the city from the worst of the attacks, while the necromancers within flooded the fields without in fire. Aidan could barely see his comrades through the waves of flame, could barely tell where one Hunter’s magic ended and a necromancer’s began. From here, it all looked the same.

  Except for the creatures spilling out through the cracks in the walls.

  Calum unleashed his Howls.

  Aidan couldn’t see them well from here, but he knew without doubt that the black mass swarming from the castle was made up almost entirely of kravens. The bent, misshapen bastard children of Earth were the backbone of the Dark Lady’s army. They craved only flesh, were mindless and crazed in that hunger and, as they broke into his comrades, he knew they would be getting more of a feast than they’d had in months.

  There was no way to hear the screams of the monsters or the men. Blood and magic bathed the field. He watched them clash. Watched figures fall or burst into flame. Human or Howl, he could barely tell.

  Ants. From here, they were just ants. Burning, racing, mindless ants.

  A small, distant part of him wanted to feel guilty. For sitting up here, watching other people die, just so he could swoop in and kill Calum later. Instantly, Fire burned up within him, incinerating the thought, the weakness—guilt was an emotion only the pathetic harbored. He wouldn’t doubt. With Fire in his veins, he knew he was right. He knew that no matter who died beforehand, the true victory would be his. Killing Calum was all that mattered in the end, no matter the cost in cannon fodder. Fire saw that clearly, and through its burn, so did he.

  It wasn’t until Kianna physically opened his palm, revealing half moons of bloodied flesh, that he realized he’d been clenching his fists.

  “How long?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “How long until we go in there?”

  He chewed on his lip and considered the plan he had laid out months before. The army on this side of the castle was a distraction. The true fight was happening further east, on the shoreline, where a dozen or so Earth mages were en route or already stationed to bring down the wall. Once the wall crumbled, the Water mages—led by Trevor—would flood the town with the waters of the Forth, drowning everyone and everything still within the city walls.

  That was the one perk of how dire things had become—there was no one left within the castle to save. Well, there probably were a few hundred humans being kept as food for the Howls, but that was a small price to pay for winning the war.

  In his mind, at least.

  Aidan almost doubted Trevor would pull the trigger.

  “Follow me,” Aidan said. He began to jog, staying low and out of sight even though no one would be looking up here. Everyone’s focus would be on the battle. “When the wall comes down and the waters subside, we can sneak in. I know a back entrance.”

  “I bet you say that to all the boys,” Kianna said.

  “Not the time.”

  “And I bet that’s what they say in response.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Aidan could feel the battle in his veins as they made their way to the back of the castle. Fire was in tune with the anger and fear, the bloodlust and rage. He’d felt this to an extent before, but never this strongly. It had been years since Scotland had felt this much magic and destruction at once. Years since an event this momentous had taken place.

  For better or worse, after tonight, everything would be different.

  Either the humans would die, and Calum would rule an empty country. Or they would win, and Aidan would be crowned a king.

  Either way, Aidan would blaze in battle. The question was whether or not that blaze would be snuffed out at the end. And frankly, Fire didn’t care. His Sphere writhed excitedly within him, scalding his chest as he tried to keep it contained. Not because his Sphere was angry. Not just because people were killing and dying so close to him.

  No. His Sphere was restless in its excitement: every step toward the castle felt like another step toward more than just victory. It felt like coming home.

  Soon, this will all be mine.

  Aidan guided them closer to the castle wall, staying far away from the main attack and moving nearer to the shore. The transition from ruined city to glass-slick wasteland was razor-sharp, a line that cut a circle all around the castle, as though someone had drawn it with a sextant, the castle at its nexus. On one side, char and rubble, soil and sodden plants. On the other, smooth, glass-black stone that reflected the burning sky above like a mirror.

  A testament of Calum’s power. His army could melt the world if he so chose.

  He never had. The Hunters had always been there to fight him back.

  Until now, Aidan thought. I’ll have the balls to do what Calum never could. Rule beyond this circle. Make the whole world kneel.

  Fire smoldered in his chest at the thought, at the rightness of it. He glanced down at his reflection. In the flickering light of the hellfire above, he didn’t look entirely human. His face was etched in shadows, and his tattoos seemed to slither over his skin like serpents. He looked demonic.

  He smiled.

  Let the whole world kneel.

  “Do you think we’re winning?” Kianna asked absently.

  On the far side of the wall, where the battle was taking place, the sky roared with flame and tornadoes, lightning and hail. Any minute now...

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Because this is taking forever.”

  He nodded. They should have leveled the wall by now. The initial attack was meant to be a distraction, not the focus. Where the hell was the second unit?

  This is why Trevor never should have let you go, Fire purred within him. Without you, the entire mission will fail. Without you, they are nothing.

  “We can’t just wait here,” he said. “Something’s wrong.”

  She nodded, as though she’d already figured that out and had been waiting for him to pick up the slack.

  The silence back here put his nerves on edge. His mind raced with possibilities of what had gone wrong. For why the wall still stood and why here, closer to the waves and the edge of the wall, everything was silent as a graveyard. He stared ahead, trying to peer through the gloom and darkness while keeping Fire dimmed for fear of giving himself away. All he could see was the towering black wall to his left and the endless expanse of dark waves ahead.

  “Is it getting colder to you?” Kianna asked.

  He’d thought it was his imagination. Scotland was always cold, even with Fire in his veins. But the moment she said it he realized his breath was coming out in puffs. The rain was lighter here, and it was then he noticed it wasn’t just misting. It was snowing. The ground beneath his feet crunched with every footstep. Ice.

  This wasn’t the work of a necromancer, not the work of any magic. No, this cold tugged at his bones, sliced its fingers through his heart and tried to pull out every last drop of heat.

  Incubi.

  The troops had been ambushed.

  “Calum knew,” he muttered, and ran faster.

  Despite the red sky and flashes of light, everything near the crashing shore was cold and steeped in shado
w. He squinted as lightning strobed across the sky, arching far out over the water.

  That’s when he saw them.

  Littered across the shore like some broken Roman palisade were dozens of columns piercing up from the soil. But he knew there weren’t columns, not here. There was nothing on the shore but charred earth and crashing waves.

  Lightning flashed.

  Despite the burn of Fire in his chest, he still found room to be shocked. The columns were the second unit. Scattered and frozen midcharge.

  Frozen, save for the few figures still walking among the dead. The figures that had realized they weren’t alone.

  Kianna was at the ready, a sword in her left hand and a pistol in her right. He didn’t think. Fire didn’t need to think. Fire just needed to kill.

  He pulled deeper through the heat, let the embers roar to life, and gave in to that one immutable need.

  Fire flared bright in his chest, hissing power through his limbs and lighting his adrenaline with newfound need. Flames spiraled around his clenched palms. Cast their shadows over the black and the snow like wraiths. The incubi screamed out. The world around them cut colder as the Howls tried to drain their Spheres.

  Aidan burned brighter, and as the snow fell around them, they fell upon the Howls.

  The incubi and their female counterparts, succubi, were humanoid and beautiful, seductive if not for the blood smeared on their faces and wild looks in their copper eyes. The Howls born of Fire craved human heat and could drain it from their victim from afar. It accounted for the rain-turned-snow, for the frigid cold that ate at his bones, the bite that—had he not been open to Fire—would have sent him to his knees. But with the Sphere burning in his chest, he felt immune. He poured all of himself into the flame, wrapped himself and Kianna in burning heat.

  To the incubi, he was a damn buffet.

  Good. Let them gorge.

  He grabbed the first incubus by the throat and threw him to the side, right in the path of Kianna’s blade. Two shots, two flashes of gunfire, and two more Howls fell, bullets piercing right between their eyes, blood bursting behind them in fine mists.